Metta Vipassana: Cultivating Love & Wisdom (Vancouver)

With Michele McDonald and Steven Smith

Vipassana (Insight or Mindfulness) meditation practice unites the stillness of concentration with the immediacy of moment to moment silent 6 sense door awareness. By calming body and mind, intuitive wise knowing arises — opening to the truth of each moment’s experience within and around us. In this way, we increase our ability to meet life’s ups and downs with graceful ease and peace.

Metta (Lovingkindness) meditation practice calls forth the beautiful spiritual emotions within our heart: lovingkindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity. Mindfulness of these qualities strengthens and matures them, which leads to a constancy of thinking, acceptance and reverence for our bodies, as well as speaking and acting from the purity of these emotions.

During this silent weekend retreat, new and experienced students are encouraged to deepen their liberation practice in an atmosphere of relaxed affectionate awareness. The program provides meditation instruction, guided meditations and question and answer periods. Sitting and walking sessions are alternated. There will be Dhamma teaching talks and small group discussions with the teachers.

New and experienced students are welcome.

Presenters

Michele McDonald
Michele McDonald has taught Insight meditation for thirty three years and teaches extensively throughout America, in Canada, Burma, and various locations around the world. As a guiding teacher for Vipassana Hawai’i she has been a quiet pioneer. She is the first woman to have taught a formal retreat in Burma, side-by-side with a senior monastic figure (Sayadaw U Lakkhana, Abbot of Kyaswa Monastery). Her style of teaching focuses on helping individuals find entry points into stillness that are natural for them. vipassanahawaii.org Learn more about Michele McDonald

Steven Smith
Steven V. Smith co-founded Vipassana Hawai’i in 1984 and in 1995 founded the MettaDana Project for educational and medical projects in Burma. Also in 1995 Steven helped establish the Kyaswa Valley Retreat Center in Burma, headed by Sayadaw U Lakkhana. This partnership created Vipassana Hawai’i’s Fusion Dhamma approach combining traditional and contemporary teaching styles in the same retreat. Anchored in the Theravadan Buddhist Burmese lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw since 1974, he was trained and sanctioned as a teacher by revered monk and meditation master Sayadaw U Pandita. Steven teaches Vipassana and the Divine Abodes (loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity) at meditation retreats… Learn more about Steven Smith

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